Innholdsfortegnelse for June/July 2025 i Garden & Gun

.01 SPECIAL FEATURE Explore the G&G Bucket List This spring, G&G launched a digital bucket list with fifty must-see events and attractions across the South and beyond for 2025. Here are some of our favorites: GARDEN-HOP IN KENTUCKY EAT TEXAS’S BEST BARBECUE CAST A LINE IN PUNTA PÁJAROS, MEXICO FOR MORE ADVENTURES, VISIT: gardenandgun.com/bucketlist .02 FREE TRIAL Screen Time Though it’s hard to beat the feeling of a print magazine in your hands, getting full issues of Garden & Gun on your screen comes pretty close. Our digital editions are formatted for easy browsing across devices, whether you’re scrolling through on a desktop, tablet, or phone. Start your free trial today and you’ll receive access to not only the current issue, but also our library of back issues,…

Find us on Facebook, Instagram, X, and TikTok @gardenandgun “You can’t get any more Southern than a G&G Back Porch Session with the Allman Betts Band” LIFE OF THE PARTY I loved “The Southerner’s Guide to Throwing a Great Party” (April/May 2025). It had great entertaining ideas and was written with humor. I especially loved the advice “Embrace the disgrace” and “Nobody is coming to your party because they want to have a bad time.” Ginny Arndt Snellville, Georgia I was so excited about the cheese straw biscuits with country ham on the April/ May issue’s cover that I had to give them a go with our Easter dinner. Marinella Kelly West Chester, Pennsylvania RED WOLF REVIVAL I am so proud of our zoos—especially in South and North Carolina—for keeping…

Walker Babington looks like he came straight out of a vaudeville tent, the curling ends of his thick mustache bookending a mischievous smile. That theatricality extends to the rest of the New Orleans artist’s life. Babington is a working stuntman, trained to fall, fight, or catch on fire. And he’s a self-taught sculptor whose giant Seussian structures—previously spotted only at such festivals as Burning Man and Mardi Gras—now have Smithsonian street cred. Babington says he’s always been “extra.” While he was growing up in Maryland, “my parents saw potential success but also worried I might end up in jail,” he recalls with a laugh. After a few years globe-trotting, in 2011 he enrolled in a Seattle stunt school and has since landed roles in such films as The Magnificent Seven…

Taylor Meier has good fishing stories. The cofounder and lead singer of the folk-rock band Caamp gushes about the band playing in Alaska and catching salmon as big as guitars, or fly fishing while on tour near Idaho’s Box Canyon. “It’s cool what being on the water will do for calming your mind,” he says over dinner at a cozy Italian joint in his hometown of Columbus, Ohio. “I’ve definitely healed some of my stuff out there.” He wasn’t the only one searching for some peace. Meier and fellow founder Evan Westfall have been best friends since they were kids. Meier is the charismatic front man, while Westfall is the quiet anchor, complementing Meier’s wistful lyrics with delicate arrangements. (The band also includes bassist Matt Vinson, keyboardist Joseph Kavalec, and…

Colorado Cool-Aid Yield: 1 cocktail INGREDIENTS 1½ oz. bourbon ½ oz. Amaro Montenegro 1 oz. fresh lemon juice ½ oz. dark sugar syrup (recipe follows)Coors Banquet beerOrange peel, for garnish For the darksugar syrup: ¾ cup PREPARATION Make the syrup: Combine all ingredients in a saucepan and heat gently until all sugar is dissolved. Store in refrigerator. Make the cocktail: Combine all liquid ingredients except beer in a shaker and shake with ice for 10 seconds until chilled. Strain the cocktail over fresh ice into a 14-oz. glass beer mug, preferably frosted. Top off with Coors Banquet. Garnish with an orange peel. Summer is long drink season—the sultry weather leads to cravings for tall, cooling beverages. And so highballs appear, and classic winter…

Alonso Smith limps across the main drag in Montezuma, a town of three thousand people tucked into a bend of the Flint River in Southwest Georgia. Bound for an idling Freightliner, Smith wears a yellow reflective vest and clutches a brown paper bag stuffed with two chili cheeseburgers and a sleeve of fries. He’s hauling sawdust today. The interstate would have been faster, Smith tells me after he climbs in the cab to eat lunch. “But the interstate ain’t got Troy’s.” A block away on Cherry Street, Richard Collier stands behind the high-top counter at Troy’s Snack Shack, a screen door–fronted café that dates back to the 1950s. Sipping from a bottle of Mello Yello, eyeglasses smeared with grease, he takes orders from regulars who mob the place five days…

THE SIDE DOOR TO THE CHURCH OPENS just as Shawn A. Cosby, the best-selling crime novelist known as S. A. Cosby, finishes describing his current main character’s sexual kink.• One of the church trustees, a model of the kind of female efficiency that has powered Black churches like this one since emancipation, bustles in. This is Emmaus Baptist, Cosby’s home congregation in Mathews, Virginia, nestled between two roads not far from the Tidewater cities of Williamsburg and Gloucester, where Cosby now resides. Inside, the Cosby name is everywhere. Just minutes before, Cosby’s fingers had traced a simple pencil drawing in a back room behind the pulpit. The illustration, by his niece, depicts the church’s family tree, which overlaps with his own. The names of the founding fathers, who organized the…

Motoring to the entrance of Primland offers plenty of brake-worthy views of rural Southwest Virginia, especially if you do so via the nearby Blue Ridge Parkway. But you’re not done ogling the scenery yet: Once you pass that entrance, you’ll wind another twenty minutes, ever deeper into majestically dense forest, before reaching the Lodge, which, like other parts of the property, has recently undergone a significant update in appearance and amenities. At twelve thousand acres, Primland, part of the Auberge Resorts Collection, hearkens back to the sprawling retreats created more than a century ago by families with surnames like Rockefeller and Vanderbilt. Indeed, when the four-story, cedar-sided Lodge finally does come into view, flanked by stone chimneys and terraces against a backdrop of immaculately groomed fairways and forested ridges that…

I have a confession to make. If you send me a letter, you can trust that I will read it. But while I have noble aims, I don’t always get around to responding. This realization was brought home to me more than ever recently, as I cleaned out my office in preparation for G&G’s move to our new headquarters a couple of miles away in the heart of downtown Charleston, South Carolina. Stashed in various spots were all the missives I had meant to answer, not quickly but with intention. And that’s the problem. Intention takes time, and that’s usually at a premium these days in the media biz. To be sure, some letters don’t require a response. Like the one from the fellow who wrote to tell me it…

WE ASKED… Can you describe the perfect Southern day in five words or fewer? In our Talk of the South newsletter, readers shared their ideal itineraries. Day drinking in the Quarter. Valerie W. Fly fishing a trout stream. Terena C. A hike in the Smokies. Haskell R. Good book on the porch. Bebe K. Georgia football with my granddaddy. Traci-Knight R. Back roads. Peanuts. Allman Brothers. Allen A. Sunshine, low humidity, no gnats. Lisa S. Beach chair and Gulf breeze. Doug D. Pawleys Island causeway at dawn. Kim F. Beach walking with surf rod. Walter T. Barefoot walk on Mobile Bay. Jayne E.…

The most famous hunting scenes in Southern literature must surely belong to “The Bear.” William Faulkner’s novella, which he began publishing versions of in 1935, chronicles the yearslong pursuit of Old Ben, a giant black bear with a maimed foot and fifty-two lumps where shotgun slugs had failed to pierce his hide, like the broken harpoons bristling Moby Dick. Every November, in the “gray half-liquid” of autumn in Mississippi, Faulkner’s hunters convene at a camp at the edge of the Delta for the chance to fell Old Ben at last, engaging in what they see as “the ancient and unremitting contest according to the ancient and immitigable rules.” As historian Julia Brock shows, in Closed Seasons: The Transformation of Hunting in the Modern South, those rules were neither ancient nor…

You’d be hard-pressed to find a list of Tennessee’s top chefs without Erik Niel’s name on it. For two decades, he and his wife, Amanda, have showcased the food of the Tennessee River Valley at their Chattanooga restaurants. They first opened Easy Bistro & Bar in 2005. Ten years later, they added Main Street Meats, a whole-animal butcher shop and restaurant. Their most recent addition, Little Coyote, channels Erik’s fondness for the smoked meats and flavors of Texas, where he was born and later returned for high school and college. In between, the family moved to Mandeville, Louisiana, just north of New Orleans. And like most people raised near the Gulf, he’s got a lot of opinions about shrimp. His favorites are what he calls Gulf brown hoppers—brown shrimp that…

FLOATS Build a splashy armada with Business & Pleasure’s yellow cabana stripe design ($599; businessandpleasureco.com) and two colorful rings by the Nice Fleet ($64 each; thenicefleet.com). UMBRELLA Impart a preppy sixties Palm Royale vibe with a vintage-inspired Serena & Lily pagoda umbrella piped in green (starting at $1,298; serena andlily.com). CHAISE For this outdoor lounger, Serena & Lily pairs a wickeresque base that looks delightfully old-school Southern with a more modern silhouette (starting at $2,498; serena andlily.com). PILLOW COVER Sure, this outdoor throw pillow covering by Serena & Lily can weather the elements, but even better, it ups the ante with a detail normally reserved for indoor decor: kicky pom-pom trim (starting at $78; serena andlily.com). SIDE TABLE Give your daiquiri, piña colada, or ranch water a posh place to…

TAKE A FLOATING HOLIDAY Key Largo, Florida 1 Picture a Four Seasons take on Robinson Crusoe. Anchored to the seafloor just a short pontoon-shuttle ride off Key Largo, each of the three self-contained Ombi floating bungalows is a sort of miniature eco-resort, boiled down to the essentials: king-size bed, 180-degree ocean panorama through floor-to-ceiling windows, a few water toys (kayak, paddleboard, snorkels), walk-in shower, fridge and coffee maker, a TV (if you must), and a plunge into the cooling shallows right outside your door. Now and then the neighbors might drop by unannounced: dolphins, manatees, sea turtles, schools of tarpon. Hungry? Choose between BYO or prearranged breakfast, dinner, or both, ferried to your deck. And that’s it. “There’s a stillness to it that is pretty enveloping,” says Tim Jensen, one…

So there we were on the storied River Deveron in the merry month of May, an equally merry band of well-seasoned ladies and gents who over the years have traveled together far and wide in search of piscatorial, cultural, gustatory, and vinous adventures. An A-Team of pura vida angling predators, we were…and after two full days on the river, not one brown trout over sixteen inches among us. And nobody cared. Not one of the people around the long, lavishly appointed dinner table at Avochie Estate’s main house that night so much as mentioned the less than stellar fishing. It would have been like carping that the dill sauce for the perfectly cooked salmon we were served was not quite the thing. ¶ In fact, this group has never mistaken…

Susan Orlean WRITER Because her mother was afraid of dogs, Susan Orlean didn’t have a pet in her home in the suburbs of Cleveland until she was about thirteen. “We finally persuaded my mother that a small, twelve-pound dog wasn’t likely to eat her,” says the journalist, who has written eleven books, including the 1998 bestseller The Orchid Thief, and will release her memoir, Joyride, in October. “But my idea of the perfect Sunday growing up was driving somewhere I could see horses.” That was also around the time she read the children’s novel Misty of Chincoteague for the first time, which she revisits in “Chincoteague Everlasting” (p. 138). “The book presented an idyllic version of what childhood could be like for an animal lover like me,” Orlean says. Latria…

“Cashiers is one of the few places where our kids can run around, and I don’t worry about someone being on their cell phone and hitting them on their bikes. It feels slow and nostalgic in the best way” It should come as no surprise that Brooklyn Decker arrived at her G&G photo shoot at Charlotte’s Intown Golf Club brimming with creative energy. The seasoned model appeared in six Sports Illustrated swimsuit issues (including on the 2010 cover) before pivoting to acting, tech start-ups, and interior design. In fact, the thirty-eight-year-old alum of Netflix’s über-popular Grace and Frankie helped create the look for the virtual-reality golf concept and invested in it along with her husband, tennis Hall of Famer Andy Roddick. After years living in Austin, Texas, Decker and Roddick…

On an early spring morning at Archbold Biological Station in Central Florida, the ornithologist John Fitzpatrick lifts his binoculars to train his sights on a Florida scrub jay. Spotting the vivid blue-and-gray bird is not difficult: Two hop just in front of him, another studies him from a nearby branch, and one lands squarely on his head, peering out over the sugary white sand of an ecosystem as rare and endangered as the bird itself. This is the monthly scrub-jay census, when biologists count each of their three hundred or so subjects, all identifiable by a unique set of colored leg bands. The study of Archbold’s birds—among the most in-depth and long-standing of any bird, anywhere—began nearly sixty years ago. Fitzpatrick himself joined the efforts in April 1972 as an…

Along the edge of a sweeping marshfront on James Island, South Carolina, grassy paths wind through a tropical patchwork of color and texture: the vibrant greens of tractor seat plants and staghorn ferns, sunshine-hued bromeliads, and clouds of chartreuse hydrangeas. As Alejandro González and Jim Smeal meander toward a shaded perch at the back of their property, the flush of orange and yellow blanketing the ground thins out. There, yaupon holly fringes a panoramic view of the marsh, and the couple soak in the inspiration for their garden’s palette while watching ibis and herons sail above the salty creeks. “The marsh changes colors every season,” González says, nodding toward swaths of spartina grass that shift in the light. “You cannot compete with it.” Some twenty-six years ago, when González and…

Why should kids have all the fun? This summer, as you’re loading up their camp trunks, consider packing one for yourself. From a barrier island cooking class with a celebrated Gullah cookbook author to fly-fishing lessons knee-deep in a North Carolina trout stream, these seven uniquely Southern experiences tap into the nostalgia of summer camp and remind the young at heart that there’s no age limit on creativity, curiosity, and the thrill of mastering a new skill. LEARNING ON THE FLY Brookings Anglers Cashiers, North Carolina “There’s an old saying that ‘trout don’t live in ugly places,’” says Matt Canter, owner of Brookings Anglers in Cashiers, North Carolina, which offers private fly-fishing lessons year-round in the narrow trout streams of the Blue Ridge Mountains—some of Mother Nature’s true masterworks. The…

“Deer love baby sunflowers,” says Catherine Garrison, who co-owns Denver Downs Farm in Anderson, South Carolina. Most folks love the big blooms, too, and so gardeners might consider fencing or netting to keep creatures at bay. As the 220-acre farm—with a 10-acre sunflower patch—prepares to host its annual Sunflower Festival (June 13–15 and 20–22), Garrison shares three of her favorite varieties for the home gardener’s plot: Textbook yellow petals and a dark center make the Black Oil a classic cut stem, but it also possesses a surprising ecological upside as a hyperaccumulator, cleansing the soil by absorbing toxic metals. The ProCut Gold bloom, one of Garrison’s favorites, sits radiant atop a tall stem. Its green center, ringed by layered golden petals, is particularly striking as part of a single-variety bouquet…